Behnam Ben Taleblu
Excerpt
The Cabinet of Iran’s new president, Ebrahim Raisi, represents the culmination of a decades-long political project by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to promote ultra-hardline elites to key leadership positions. Drawn from an increasingly narrow bench, Raisi’s appointees include several persons who served under former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005–2013), who also harbored immense hostility to the West and stacked his Cabinet with veterans of Iran’s security forces.
Reflecting this new constellation of power, Raisi’s Cabinet boasts 12 sanctioned individuals, more than any other in the history of the Islamic Republic. These persons are subject to overlapping international penalties imposed by the United States, European Union, United Kingdom, and United Nations due to their role in Khamenei’s networks, support for Iran’s nuclear program, ties to terrorist groups, and human rights abuses. These 12 also hold some of the most important portfolios, including the ministries of defense, interior, and petroleum as well as two vice presidencies.
The Cabinet members under sanctions include eight persons on the U.S. Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) List, seven persons subject to UK sanctions, seven persons subject to EU sanctions, and one person on a UN sanctions list. The EU and UK lists mirror one another, and both entities will delist the same three persons come October 2023, pursuant to the implementation timeline of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Similarly, UN sanctions will terminate in October 2023 pursuant to the same JCPOA implementation timeline. The other four EU and UK designations against members of Raisi’s Cabinet will remain, as they were issued under human rights-related authorities and are separate from each entity’s JCPOA commitments. Three of those four individuals have yet to be sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department.
Behnam Ben Taleblu is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
Courtesy: (FDD)
